"And the more things have changed, the more they stay the same. There's always that segment of that population that is resistant to change."

The Stockton Pride Festival was Saturday at Oak Grove Regional Park. Earlier in the week, I wandered into downtown's Pride Center to talk to people there.

Pfeifle, 34, belongs to a bridge generation. She can look back and see vastly different attitudes.

As recently as 2008, for instance, 65 percent of county voters approved Proposition 8, denying gays and lesbians the right to marry.

"Now, you see a much more open bisexual population, a much more open transgender population, you see everything in between," Pfeifle said. "You hear about people in poly relationships, mixed and matched with their gender."

On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court issued the final rebuff to conservative Christians who argued unfathomably that Proposition 8 was still state law, even though it has been ruled unconstitutional.

In the five years between voter passage of Proposition 8 and the final nail in its coffin, President Barack Obama changed his position on same-sex marriage; the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act; the military killed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; and cultural attitudes changed at a speed somewhere between rapidly and like, whoa.

Probably because an overwhelming percentage of Americans (87 percent) say they know someone who is gay or lesbian (Pew Research Center).

Still, 54 percent is a slim enough majority, and the Valley red-state enough, that many Stockton gays tread lightly in public.

To live here is to anticipate a range of potential public reactions, from acceptance to fundamentalists and macho men who might get ugly.

"When I'm with my wife, I may not put my arms around her," said Mandy Oliver-Lopez, 38, a database administrator. "I many not be openly affectionate when I'm out in public."

Similarly, "I wouldn't feel comfortable walking out onto a dance floor where I was the only gay couple," she said.

Yet Oliver-Lopez considers Stockton a good place to live. "This is a place I call home," she said.

Hers is a complex niche. At home, she is loved. At work her employer accepts that she is lesbian. In public, she sidesteps tenacious discrimination while enjoying steadily increasing acceptance.

"It can be there," she said. "I'm seeing it more and more. It's a little bit easier."

At Club Paradise - it's Freakin' Friday! But Stockton's venerable gay bar is no longer the gay community's sole sanctuary (though it remains the only place where drags perform and the queen of the Imperial San Joaquin Delta Empire holds court).

At cafes, bars and restaurants across town, "I see gay couples in there," said Miguel Guillen, 23. "It just makes me very happy. You don't need to hide it anymore."

Nor at home, either.

"When I mention to them that I am gay, none of them have dropped me or ended family relations," Guillen said.

Sometimes it almost seems like younger gays live in a different city.

"I have no problem doing it," Matthew Craig, 26, said of public displays of affection with his boyfriend.

"He sometimes is a little uncomfortable with it," Craig said. "But it doesn't bother me that much. I'll hold his hand, I'll put my arms around him, give him the sign to go ahead and give me a kiss."

Members of the public "don't say anything," Craig said. "I have actually never had to deal with anyone saying anything about it to me."

My interview subjects don't speak for everybody. There are still youths torn about themselves, ostracized, suicidal.

But the folks I spoke with seem to represent a community that no longer feels it needs to export its real self to the Castro District. Not gay heaven. But a community with sufficient numbers, social scene and support system to flourish.

"It makes me very happy that our community is changing," Guillen said. "And it's changing very rapidly, and I love it."

The latest gay tragedy: being born too soon.

"I think it also depends on what demographic you're a part of," Pfeifle said. "I've seen a younger crowd I would have killed to have had 15 years ago."